Jörg Echternkamp

Postwar Soldiers (eBook, ePUB)

Historical Controversies and West German Democratization, 1945-1955

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Contemporary historians have transformed our understanding of the German military in World War II, debunking the "clean Wehrmacht" myth that held most soldiers innocent of wartime atrocities. Considerably less attention has been paid to those soldiers at the end of hostilities. In Postwar Soldiers, Jörg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities' self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier. As Echternkamp shows, public controversies around these topics helped to drive the social processes that legitimized the democratic postwar order.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Berghahn Books
• Seitenzahl: 570
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. März 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781789205589
• Artikelnr.: 58689848

Autorenporträt

Jörg Echternkamp is Research Director at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences (ZMSBw) and Associate Professor of Modern History at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He is co-editor of the journal Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift. Echternkamp was awarded the "Geisteswissenschaften International" translation grant in 2017.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Problem: Paths Out of the War
Part I: Forms of Consciousness and Prospects for Experience before 1945
Chapter 1. Heroic Images of War in the Age of Wars
Chapter 2. Shared Prospects of Experience in Total War
Chapter 3. The End of the War on the Horizon of Expectation, 1944-1945
Part II: A Criminal War?
Chapter 4. The Postwar Period as a Backdrop for Experience
Chapter 5. Demilitarization as an Allied Political Program
Chapter 6. Representation as a Legal Issue: The Military Leadership on
Trial, 1945-1946
Chapter 7. Conflicting Ideas: The Wehrmacht between Elucidation and Myth
Chapter 8. Provisional Assessment
Part III: Veterans - an Experiential Community of "Victims"?
Chapter 9. Self-Organization among Former Soldiers
Chapter 10. Internal and External Perceptions of Veterans: Victims and
Achievers
Chapter 11. The Presence of the Absent: The Symbolic Representation and the
Political Instrumentalization of Prisoners of War
Chapter 12. Experience versus. Expectation: Consumption Critique and War
Captivity
Chapter 13. Remembering the Fallen: Historical Signification between
Commemorative Ceremony and Grave Care
Part IV: Competing Interpretations and Conferring Meaning: War Stories of
"Others"
Chapter 14. The Military Resistance: Fostering Tradition as a Political Act
and Biographical Challenge
Chapter 15. Defectors, Deserters, War Criminals: Mirroring Self-Images
Chapter 16. The Führer Abroad: Defense by Demarcation
Chapter 17. Traitors, Spies, and Other "Loners": The War's Trivialization
in the Media
Chapter 18. Provisional Assessment
Part V: Historically Armed: Images of War and Soldiers in Military
Leadership Philosophy and Political Public Relations Work
Chapter 19. Military Self-Understanding between the "Old" and "New"
Wehrmacht
Chapter 20. The Adenauer Government's Efforts at Integration in the
Pre-political Realm
Chapter 21. Moral Rearmament: The Party Soldiers of the Free Democratic
Party
Chapter 22. The Political Functionality of "Wartime Experience" in the Cold
War
Chapter 23. Remilitarization as a Field of Tension in Collective
Representations
Chapter 24. Provisional Assessment
Conclusion: A Prospective View and Summary
Bibliography
Index